Colo. parolee ditched tracking device before slayings

Apr. 2, 2013
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Evan Ebel somehow disabled his electronic monitoring device March 14, days before a Denver pizza driver and the Colorado prisons director were slain. He was not considered a suspect until after he died March 21 in a shootout with Texas authorities. / Colorado Department of Corrections via AP

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

Colorado parolee Evan Ebel ditched his electronic monitoring device five days before he allegedly killed the state's prisons chief and a Denver pizza driver, according to documents released Tuesday.

Parole officers showed up at Ebel's house hours before Corrections Director Tom Clements was shot dead March 19 but discovered he had fled, the Department of Corrections documents show.

An arrest warrant for violating parole was issued the next day, but Ebel was not suspected of having killed Clements and Domino's driver Nathan Leon on March 17 until after he died in a shootout with Texas authorities March 21.

AP writes that Ebel, who was a member of a white supremacist prison gang, "had been a model parolee" until authorities were alerted March 14 that the GPS device had been tampered with and was not working. It wasn't immediately clear how it was disabled.

Ebel's father had given him a job at his law firm and provided housing. On March 16, two days after prison authorities received the "tamper alert," corrections officers called Ebel and told him to report so his bracelet could be repaired. He never showed up, AP says.

On Monday, Colorado court authorities apologized for an error that allowed Ebel to be released in late January after an eight-year prison term without serving a mandated four additional years for pleading guilty to attacking a guard in 2006.

Ebel escaped his handcuffs, punched the guard in the face and threatened to kill his family.

In a letter that guards seized in 2006, Ebel wrote of desire to kill prison staff, the Associated Press says.

"I just fantasize about catching them out on the bricks and subjecting them to vicious torture and eventual murder," he wrote. "And that seems to get me through the days (with) a good degree of my sanity remaining intact."

In the apology Monday, a court administrator said a judicial mistake caused Ebel to be released.

"Because the judge did not expressly state that the sentence was consecutive, the court judicial assistant did not include that term in the mittimus, the sentence order that went to the Department of Corrections," said 11th Judicial District administrator Walter Blair. "The court regrets this oversight and extends condolences to the families of Mr. Nathan Leon and Mr. Tom Clements."

"We have to do better in the future," Tim Hand, the head of the Department of Correction's parole division, told the AP on Tuesday. "It forces us to step back and see what things we need to examine."